The Magnet of Misery

The Magnet of Misery

In the quiet lane behind the old Hanuman temple in Dehradun lived Baba Samaranand, retired electrical engineer from Bharat Heavy Electricals, self-certified philosopher, and part-time therapist who charged nothing but asked for total surrender to his “methods”. People called him “Baba Magnet-wale” because he had a bowl full of fridge magnets shaped like laughing Buddhas, OM signs, and one suspiciously obscene dancing Shiva that he swore was “pure tantra”.

One monsoon afternoon, a man stormed in wearing a safari suit two sizes too tight, face redder than a Diwali lantern.

“Babaji!” he shouted, “I am Vinod Tandon, branch manager, Punjab National Bank, Sector 17. My life is finished! My BP is 180/110, my wife has stopped cooking paneer, my daughter wants to marry a boy who makes YouTube videos about cryptocurrency, and yesterday the ATM swallowed my own debit card! Tell me, Babaji, is mercury retrograde or have I offended Shani-dev in my previous birth?”

Baba Samaranand was drinking tea from a steel glass that had “Best Employee 1998” printed on it. He looked at Vinod over the rim, slow as a lizard.

“Arre Tandon-sahib, sit. First remove your shoes, they are leaking tension on my floor.”

Vinod sat, sweating.

Baba opened his wooden Godrej cupboard, took out a bright red horseshoe magnet, and placed it in Vinod’s palm.

“Hold this.”

Vinod stared. “That’s it? I came from Chandigarh for a magnet?”

“Shh. Close fist. Feel the pull.”

Vinod closed his fist. “Nothing is pulling.”

“Exactly,” Baba smiled. “That is the whole point. The world is pulling you from all sides, wife, daughter, ATM, cryptocurrency damad. But this magnet is pulling nothing. For ten minutes daily, you sit with it and tell it your problems. It will listen quietly. No advice, no judgement, no forward of good-morning messages. Just listening.”

Vinod looked doubtful. “But Babaji, this is just cognitive behavioural distraction, right?”

Baba’s eyes widened in admiration. “Arre wah! You also read WhatsApp University psychology groups? Good, then you already know it works. Now go, complain to the magnet, not to your liver.”

Vinod left, slightly confused but lighter.

Three weeks later he returned, looking ten kilos thinner and suspiciously cheerful.

“Babaji, miracle! BP is 130/85, wife made paneer twice, daughter’s boyfriend has only 40,000 subscribers so I have postponed my heart attack, and the bank gave me new card with extra cashback. Your magnet is dev-amaan!”

Baba waved his hand. “Magnet is duffer, yaar. You just stopped short-circuiting your own brain.”

Next came Mrs. Shukla, chemistry teacher from St. Joseph’s, famous for making class 10th boys cry with her mole-concept sarcasm.

“Baba, I can’t sleep. Every night I calculate how many children have ruined their future because they confuse valency with validity. I wake up at 3 a.m. shouting ‘Avogadro!’ in my dream.”

Baba listened patiently, then disappeared into his little courtyard and returned with a small tulsi plant in a broken coffee mug.

“This is Tulsi Devi version 2.0. Your new daughter.”

Mrs. Shukla frowned. “I already have one tulsi outside my house.”

“That one is on autopilot. This one is on manual mode. Your job: keep her alive. Not too much water, not too little. Morning sun till 11, then shade. Talk to her in Hindi, she hates English medium.”

Mrs. Shukla laughed despite herself. “You’re giving me a plant instead of sleeping pills?”

“Sleeping pills have short cut. Plant has no short cut. Every day you will wake up thinking ‘Did I kill Tulsi Devi today?’ By the time you finish checking her soil, your brain will be too tired to torture you with mole concept. Nature’s own CBT.”

Mrs. Shukla took the plant like it was made of glass.

Six months later she sent Baba a Rakhi made of tulsi leaves and a card: “Tulsi Devi now has 47 children (cuttings). I sleep like Kumbhakaran. Thank you for upgrading my motherboard.”

Then came the grand finale: young Arjun, software engineer, 27 years old, 27 tabs open in brain.

“Baba, I have decision paralysis. Startup or Google? Arrange marriage or Tinder? Keto or rice? I overthink so much I forgot my own Wi-Fi password.”

Baba looked at him sadly. “Beta, you are trying to take short cut to life. Life has no Ctrl+Z.”

He thought for a long time, then went inside and returned with… nothing.

Arjun panicked. “No magnet? No plant?”

Baba shook his head. “For you, I have a task that even Google cannot optimise.”

He pointed to a rusty iron trunk in the corner. “Every morning at 6 a.m. you will come here, open this trunk, take out one old photograph, look at it for five minutes, try to remember the story behind it, then put it back exactly the way it was. No phone, no music, no short cut.”

Arjun opened the trunk. Inside were hundreds of faded photographs: someone’s wedding, someone’s first bicycle, a group of engineers in bell-bottoms holding a “400 kV line energised” banner.

“Whose photos are these?” Arjun asked.

“Mine, my friends’, strangers’ who left them here over twenty years. Some dead, some forgotten. You will never know the full story. That is the point. You will sit with mystery that has no closure, no LinkedIn profile, no resolution. Your overthinking engine will sputter and die because it has nothing to optimise.”

Arjun came every morning for three months. One day he arrived with a big grin.

“Baba, I have stopped overthinking.”

“Good!”

“I joined my father’s hardware shop in Roorkee. Cash only, no UPI, no decisions, no keto.”

Baba looked shocked. “Arre! That is too much offline, beta!”

Arjun laughed. “No short cut, Baba. You said.”

Baba hugged him. “Accha, at least update the shop’s WhatsApp DP once a year.”

Years passed. Baba Samaranand’s veranda became famous. People came with anxiety, left with magnets, plants, old photographs, sometimes just a safety pin he asked them to count every day (“there are exactly 108 grooves, no more, no less”).

One evening, a foreign lady journalist arrived with a big camera. “Sir, BBC wants to do a story: ‘The Indian Guru Who Heals With Fridge Magnets’.”

Baba offered her tea in the Best Employee 1998 glass.

“Madam, I am not guru. I am only retired electrical engineer. I know one thing: current always takes path of least resistance. Human beings also want least resistance. Anxiety is high-resistance path. I give tiny low-resistance loops, magnet, plant, photograph, so current calms down.”

The journalist smiled. “So placebo?”

Baba grinned, showing paan-stained teeth. “Placebo, placebo-effect, placebo-wallah, whatever. As long as the fuse doesn’t blow, who cares about the brand name?”

She asked for a magnet to take home.

Baba gave her the obscene dancing Shiva one.

“Careful, madam. This one has extra tantric pull.”

She laughed all the way back to London.

And in the quiet lane behind the Hanuman temple, Baba Samaranand kept his bowl of magnets ready.

Because some problems need surgery, some need medicines, and some just need a small, ridiculous task so the mind stops short-circuiting itself.

After all, as he liked to say, “In the grand 440 kV transmission line of life, sometimes all you need is a little grounding.”

A leaaf from a diary

I came across this short story written in blank verse!

The doorbell hums, a single lazy bee.  

I open—there stands a man of thirty-five  

or so, tall, smiling like an old refrain  

I almost know. His face is half a ghost  

of someone’s son; the eyes, perhaps, the chin—  

they tug at memory, then slip the hook.  

“Uncle,” he says, and folds his hands in greeting,  

the word a warm coin pressed into my palm.  

I stare, ashamed. These sixty years of postings—  

Ambala, Tezpur, Wellington, Surat—  

have strewn my mind with faces like confetti  

after parades long over. North, South, East,  

West: I have shaken hands in every dust  

and every rain this country owns. Somewhere  

among those thousands, surely, is his father.  

I smile the helpless smile of the forgetful,  

usher in this polite familiar stranger.  

“Sit, sit,” I say, and wave him to the sofa  

whose springs still sigh for friends who never age.  

The maid is summoned; tea will come anon.  

He sets a box upon the table—mithai,  

bright as festival, wrapped in silver hope.  

“My mother sent,” he laughs, “she still believes  

you have the sweet tooth of a twenty-five  

year captain who could finish half a kilo  

and ask for more.”  

I shake my head, rueful. “Those days are gone, beta.  

Diabetes now polices every spoon.  

Your mother’s love is lethal in the best way—  

it tries to kill me with affection.”  

He laughs, and for an instant I almost catch  

the name that dances just behind his teeth.  

Almost. The moment slips, like railway platforms  

sliding past the window of an express  

I boarded long ago and can’t get off.  

We sip the tea. He tells me of his job,  

his wife, a child who calls the fan “helicopter.”  

I nod, I smile, I say the proper things,  

while in my skull a thousand ghostly uncles  

lean forward, straining to remember him  

for me. They fail.  

At last he rises. “I must go, Uncle-ji.  

Next time I’ll bring namkeen.”  

I touch his shoulder—warm, substantial, real—  

and feel the small sharp sorrow of the old:  

to be a crowded album no one opens  

quite the right way anymore.  

He leaves. The box of sweets remains, unopened,  

a polite assassin on the table.  

I sit alone, tasting the bitter tea  

of being loved by people I’ve forgotten  

and forgetting those who still remember me.

Varanasi diary

The Queue That Whispers Everything Human

I was leaning against the warm stone wall near the Vishwanath Temple corridor, watching the queue snake like a living thing – slow, patient, unstoppable. It was late afternoon, the kind of heat that makes your shirt stick to your back, but nobody in the line seemed to mind. They had surrendered to the wait hours ago.

An old woman in a faded green sari was fanning herself with the edge of her pallu. I fell into step beside her.

“First time, beta?” she asked without looking at me.

“No, Aunty. I just… never stand in it. I usually touch the outer wall and run.”

She laughed, a dry crackle. “Arti-style. “Same disease. My knees won’t forgive me if I stand four hours. But this time my grandson wrote from America – ‘Dadi, one darshan for my Green Card interview.’ So here I am, trading knees for visa.”

A young man ahead of us turned. Early twenties, thin beard, nervous eyes, carrying a steel lota like it was made of glass.

“Green Card is easy, Auntyji,” he said. “Try asking Baba for a boy who earns thirty lakhs but still listens to his mother.”

The old woman cackled. “Thirty lakhs and listens to mother? You’ll need the special VIP queue for that miracle, son.”

The boy blushed. “Actually… I’m here for something else.” He lowered his voice. “My parents don’t know I’m… you know… I like boys. They keep sending biodatas of girls. I thought if I ask Baba to change me normal…”

The words hung in the hot air like incense smoke.

The old woman didn’t flinch. She just looked at him for a long second, then reached out and patted his arm, gently, like he was made of porcelain.

“Beta,” she said softly, “Baba has bigger things to fix than who you love. You ask him for courage instead. The rest will follow.”

The boy’s eyes filled. He couldn’t speak, just nodded, clutching his lota tighter.

A foreign couple – tall, sunburnt, backpacks the size of small elephants – squeezed past us toward Dashashwamedh Ghat for the evening Aarti. The girl had henna on her hands that was already flaking. Her boyfriend was filming everything on a GoPro like the city might vanish if he stopped recording.

I caught up with them near the steps.

“First Aarti?” I asked.

The girl – Freya from Sweden – grinned. “Third night in a row. We can’t stop coming. It’s like… church, but with fire and drums and zero guilt.”

Her boyfriend, Lukas, lowered the camera. “Back home, religion is quiet. Here it’s loud and sweaty and everyone is shouting at God like He’s hard of hearing. I love it.”

We found a spot on the upper steps. Below us, the river was black and gold, reflecting a thousand small oil lamps that people were already floating. The priests were warming up – testing microphones, adjusting the giant lamps like rock stars tuning guitars.

A sadhu with ash-smeared chest sat cross-legged near us, smoking a chillum. Freya, fearless, offered him a biscuit from her packet. He took it solemnly, broke it in half, gave her one piece back.

“Share with Ganga,” he rasped in English. “Everything shared becomes holy.”

Lukas laughed. “Do Indians really believe the river is their mother?”

The sadhu exhaled a blue cloud. “Do Swedes really believe IKEA is furniture?”

Freya burst out laughing so hard she almost fell into the lap of a Marwari family behind us.

Down on the platform, the Aarti began. Seven young priests in saffron robes, synchronized like dancers, swinging fire in perfect circles. The bells went mad. Conches moaned. The crowd – thousands strong – roared back with claps and cries of “Har Har Mahadev!”

I looked around. The boy from the queue was there, lota abandoned somewhere, eyes shining, clapping with everyone else. The old woman stood near the front, hands folded, lips moving silently – maybe for the grandson’s Green Card, maybe for the boy’s courage, maybe for her knees.

Freya had tears running down her cheeks, mascara making little rivers. Lukas had stopped filming. Even the sadhu was swaying, chillum forgotten.

And for those forty minutes, the city stopped pretending.

No one was asking for jobs or marriages or cures or to be “fixed.”

They were just standing in firelight, singing to a God who – if the old woman was right – already knew everything they were too afraid to say out loud.

When the last lamp was offered to the river and the priests bowed, the crowd didn’t rush away like they usually do in temples. They lingered. Someone started singing Bhajan. Others joined. Even Freya hummed along, murdering the tune gloriously.

I walked back through the lanes alone. A kachori seller on the corner recognized me from previous trips.

“Extra mirch wala?” he asked, already frying.

“Double,” I said.

He grinned. “Baba blessed you tonight?”

I thought of the boy finding courage, the old woman trading knees for love, the foreigners crying into the Ganga, the sadhu sharing his biscuit.

I took the paper plate, steam rising like incense.

“Yeah,” I said. “He always does. Just never the way we expect.”

“John lies under the African night sky, his transparent shield-tent turning the wild into a window to the stars.”

---

John’s Safari at the End of the Century

When John first announced he was going on safari, Juliet had laughed in disbelief.

“You? Out there? You can barely survive a weekend without Wi-Fi!”

But John, flushed with the excitement of the new Wild Reality Safari Program, refused to back down.

“This isn’t like the old days, Jules. I’ll have the best gear. A tent that turns invisible, cooling systems that make the desert air feel like spring, food tablets that taste like anything I want. It’s safe — safer than staying in the city.”

Juliet shook her head. “Safe doesn’t mean wise. You’ll see.”

---

Arrival in the Wild

On the first evening, John unpacked his sling bag, no bigger than a school satchel, and pressed a button. In seconds, an invisible shield-tent unfurled around him. From inside, it looked like a crystal dome — he could lie in bed and gaze at the brilliant constellations. When the sun rose, the shield automatically darkened, shading him while still letting him watch the savannah wake.

The heat of the day was tamed by his cooling device, which worked by evaporating moisture and stealing latent heat from the air. A pocket of perfect coolness surrounded his tent, even as outside temperatures soared.

For food, he popped compressed nutrition tablets that could taste like anything — pizza, mangoes, even Juliet’s lasagna. Still, he nibbled on fresh African vegetables when he craved fullness.

---

Meeting Amina

On the second day, while testing his jump-shoes across a stream, John landed almost in front of a girl. She was dressed in traditional attire, carrying a bow and a quiver of arrows.

“I am Amina,” she said warily. “And you? A hunter?”

John laughed, shaking his head. “Not even close. More like… a tourist with toys.”

Amina tried to string her bow but fumbled. “My grandmother could use this to bring down a gazelle. Me? I can barely keep the arrow straight.” She eyed his tiny sling bag suspiciously. “And you say you can survive with that?”

Moments later, when a curious giraffe poked its head nearby, John tapped his animal-communication device. To Amina’s amazement, the device emitted low rumbles that matched the giraffe’s own sounds. The animal blinked, swayed its head, and calmly walked away.

“Magic?” she whispered.

“Science,” John said, grinning.

---

The Night of the Hyenas

By the fourth night, John and Amina had settled into a rhythm — she showed him signs of the land, and he showed her what his gadgets could do. But when a pack of hyenas approached, reality bit hard.

At first, the shield-tent held them back, shimmering with invisible resistance. Then, with a sharp crack, the cooling device failed — the shield dimmed, no longer at full power. The hyenas pressed closer, their laughter-like howls echoing in the night.

John grabbed his scent-spray device, which could automatically choose the chemical that repelled any species. But the cartridge sputtered — clogged. The hyenas weren’t retreating.

Amina lifted her bow with trembling hands. “John… this is no game.”

Thinking fast, John pulled up the helmet’s sensor interface. It suggested an option he hadn’t tried yet: the lion-roar playback stored in the animal-communication device.

“Cover your ears,” he told Amina, and pressed the trigger.

A deafening roar thundered across the plain. The hyenas froze, then bolted into the tall grass, whining in terror.

For a long moment, silence. Then Amina let out a shaky laugh. “Your toys… they are stronger than my arrows.”

John exhaled, trembling. “They’re not toys. Not anymore.”

---

The Leap of Trust

The next day, while crossing another wide stream, John nearly slipped mid-jump. The helmet sensors instantly calculated the angle and boosted the jump-shoes at the last second, flinging him safely to the far bank. Amina clapped in awe, but John realized something deeper: without trusting the tech, and himself, he would have fallen.

---

Departure

When the safari program ended, John packed the tent, cooling device, sprays, shoes, and tablets back into his sling bag. The satellite tracker pinged green: mission complete.

Amina tied a leather string around his wrist. “This,” she said, “so you remember — the wild is not conquered by arrows, or by machines. It is shared, when you learn to listen.”

As John looked at the horizon one last time, he realized Juliet had been wrong: this wasn’t recklessness. It was discovery — of the wild, of friendship, and of himself.

My Day With Dominique Lapierre — The Friend Who Forgot My Name But Not My City

---

My Day With Dominique Lapierre — The Friend Who Forgot My Name But Not My City

It is not every day that life places you across the table from a man whose books have shaped the way an entire nation remembers its own tragedies. But on 9th September 2001, I had the rare privilege of spending a full day with Dominique Lapierre in Bhopal—an experience that still glows in memory like a warm lamp.

Dominique, known across India for Freedom at Midnight, Calcutta, The City of Joy and It Was Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, carried an unmistakable affection for our country. His writing had the honesty of a man who observed deeply and cared even more deeply.

He had come to Bhopal that week to release his book on the Union Carbide tragedy. Ironically, the book could not be released within the city because a section of local journalists insisted on cornering him over one issue—why the book did not mention anything about the then Chief Minister, Arjun Singh, during the night of the gas leak in 1984. Rumours had floated for years that he had left Bhopal on the crucial night between 2nd and 3rd December.

The tension grew, and the programme was abandoned.

As Executive Director of BHEL, Bhopal, I felt an obligation to let his research and voice be heard. So on that very day, 9th December 2001, I invited him to our Guest House to deliver the lecture he had prepared for the city.

The publisher from Manjul Publications whispered to me, “Sir, what he will speak now is the original lecture—the one no one got to hear.”

And so, in a quiet hall tucked inside the greenery of our campus, Dominique delivered his meticulously researched account. He had spoken to victims, doctors, factory technicians, and even senior officials who had first entered the plant after the leak. His analysis of how a pesticide experiment went horribly wrong was supported with facts, drawings, diagrams, and timelines he had collected over two years of work.

It was not a lecture—it was a moral document.

After the applause subsided, we moved to lunch at the Guest House. My wife had arranged a complete Western meal for him—soup, au gratin, grilled chicken, boiled vegetables, and a proper dessert.

Dominique settled into his chair with a sigh of relief.

“Ah,” he said, “after a long time I am eating a civilised lunch!”

I laughed. “But the newspapers say you love spicy Indian food!”

He leaned forward, eyes twinkling like a mischievous schoolboy.

“My friend from Calcutta,”—for he had started calling me that since morning—“I do love India, but tell me, why do you people insist on murdering perfectly innocent vegetables?”

I feigned indignation.

“Murder? Dominique, we give vegetables a second life! They enjoy their last moments in turmeric, cumin and mustard oil.”

He chuckled, pointing his fork at me.

“This boiled carrot tastes like carrot. In your system it would taste like… everything except carrot!”

To that, my wife calmly replied, “That is why Indians are rarely deficient in imagination.”

The table erupted in laughter.

A Brief Conversation About the Gas Leak

During lunch, I gently asked him, “Dominique, after hearing so many conflicting stories, what is the one thing that shocked you the most about that night?”

He paused, spoon halfway to his lips.

“That so many people died because the alarms were silenced,” he said quietly. “And because warnings were ignored for years. Technology failed, but human arrogance failed first.”

He had interviewed factory workers who told him of malfunctioning gauges, leaking valves, safety shortcuts, and the eerie silence that followed the first burst of gas.

“And the management?” I asked.

He shrugged, a heavy sadness in his eyes.

“Some saw it as an experiment gone wrong. They forgot that the experiment was happening over a city of a million sleeping souls.”

His voice carried the weight of a man who had spent months walking through the lanes of Old Bhopal, listening to coughing victims and widows who still searched for answers.

His Heart Was Always in India

It is common knowledge that Dominique and his wife adopted a village in Bengal, and the royalties from The City of Joy funded schools, clinics, and basic infrastructure there. That sense of giving—effortless, unadvertised—was what made India love him.

A Surprise Reunion at the Airport

Years later, in January 2003, I was travelling from Bhopal to Kolkata via Mumbai. At the airport, I spotted a familiar face surrounded by admirers. I smiled, thinking he would never recognise me.

Suddenly, he turned, his eyes lit up, and he came hurrying towards me.

“My friend from Kolkata!” he shouted.

Of course, he had forgotten my name—but not the warmth of that day.

And I felt strangely elated. Because sometimes relationships don’t need exact names; they only need the memory of shared kindness.

---

Note:Dominique Lapierre, a passionate storyteller and a true friend of India, lives on through the compassion and humanity woven into his books. Though he is no more, his words continue to illuminate the struggles and strengths of ordinary people with extraordinary grace.

Golf Story

---

A Reluctant Golfer’s Afternoon — 

A crisp winter afternoon at the course—the kind where the sun behaves like it’s working on contract—and there we were: Sikka, Jaggi, Put Kedar, and I, the permanent reluctant golfer, armed with hope, doubt, and a swing that even I don't trust.

---

Sikka (adjusting his cap and flashing his signature smile at passing lady golfers):

“SN, golf is actually the simplest game on earth. The ball is not running away. Stationary. Waiting for your blessings.”

Me:

“Simplest? With trees that appear out of nowhere? This course is like a haunted forest designed by a committee.”

Jaggi (grinning in his wicked but always warm style):

“Arrey Roybabu, these trees love you. They stand exactly where your ball wants to go.”

Then, with a soft sigh,

“Golf, jokes, and friends—that’s my life now. Rest all gone with time.”

We all fell silent just for a heartbeat, the kind that comes when humour brushes against truth.

---

I stepped up to my ball. Perfect stance—knees bent, eyes down, grip textbook-correct—looking like a golfer only in the brochure.

Me:

“Everything set… only the outcome uncertain.”

I swung. The ball shot off like it understood physics for the first three seconds, then—TOK!—straight onto the only tree in the entire fairway.

Put Kedar (shaking his head like a disappointed philosopher):

“Uncle… golf is like life. You plan the route, but destiny negotiates with the nearest tree.”

---

Next tee. More lady golfers walked by. As expected, Sikka’s spine straightened, swing became silk, voice deepened.

Sikka (after a perfect drive):

“SN, did you see that? Pure muscle memory.”

Jaggi:

“And pure motivation, Roybabu—please note the timing with the ladies passing.”

Kedar nearly swallowed his laughter.

---

Then we reached the sand bunker, that desert of despair.

Me:

“My ball visits this bunker more frequently than I visit my doctor.”

Put Kedar:

“Uncle, consider it an unplanned outage. Even the best power stations face it.”

Jaggi:

“Only difference is—power stations recover faster than Roybabu’s swing.”

---

At the green, the grass began its mischief—tilting and whispering directions only it understood.

Me:

“I hit straight, grass guides left. I hit left, it shifts right. This lawn is doing politics.”

Put Kedar:

“Uncle, pendulum stroke. Calm. Smooth. Like a temple bell on a quiet evening.”

Jaggi:

“Or like Roybabu when he’s planning how to explain to Madhuri bhabhi why he’s late again.”

I lined up the putt. Back-and-forth, gentle and precise.

The ball rolled… rolled… slowed… and stopped one inch before the hole.

Me:

“And this, gentlemen, is why I remain a reluctant golfer.”

Sikka:

“But SN, without you, our foursome loses half its charm.”

Jaggi:

“True, Roybabu. Your struggles give me hope.”

Put Kedar:

“And content. Every group needs one unpredictable factor. That is you, Uncle.”

We burst out laughing and moved toward the next tee—four men negotiating trees, grass, bunkers, memory, muscle memory, and each other.

Golf looks simple.

But for a reluctant golfer like me, it remains the most dignified comedy show in the world.

---

When technology forgets compassion , even the honest can turn rogue

---

The Ghost Accounts – When AI Replaced the Human Touch

When Sunil Verma lost his job at the bank, it wasn’t because he had done something wrong.
In fact, he had done everything right — for 27 years.

He was the kind of banker customers trusted blindly. He filled their forms, reminded them about KYC deadlines, fetched photocopies, and sometimes even attended their family functions. To hundreds of senior citizens, he wasn’t just Mr. Verma from the bank — he was “Beta Sunil.”

But then came AI automation.

The bank proudly declared itself “future-ready.” Machines would now handle customer interactions, assess loan eligibility, detect fraud, and even predict customer churn — all without human intervention.

Sunil’s name appeared in the list of employees to be retrenched.
He was handed a generous severance package, a polite handshake, and a line he would never forget:

“AI will take care of our customers now.”

---

A Quiet Grudge

For a while, Sunil tried to accept the change. But the silence of his small flat and the sight of younger bankers talking to screens instead of people ate away at him.

One evening, going through his old diaries, he found something unusual — pages filled with names of customers who had no nominees. He remembered many of them: widows, retired professors, old couples whose children lived abroad and rarely called.

He also knew that several of them had passed away.
Their money, sitting untouched, had become part of the bank’s ever-growing pool of unclaimed deposits.

He stared at those names for a long time and whispered to himself,

“AI took my job… let’s see if it can notice ghosts.”

---

The Hackers’ Pact

Through his neighbour’s son, Raghav — a tech-savvy youngster known for his ‘creative coding’ — Sunil got introduced to Aryan, a wiry 22-year-old hacker with dark circles and fast fingers.

They met at a café near Connaught Place.

Raghav laughed when Sunil explained his plan.

“Uncle, you’re seriously asking us to hack a bank?”

Sunil replied evenly, “Not hack. Just… reclaim money that nobody owns. The system doesn’t care, why should we?”

Aryan raised an eyebrow.

“Unclaimed accounts? That’s clever. But dangerous.”

Sunil smiled. “I’ve worked in that bank for decades. I know where the data sleeps.”

And that’s how the operation began — quietly, meticulously.

---

The Ghost Accounts

Using Sunil’s insider knowledge and the hackers’ technical skill, they created a sophisticated network of small transfers — a few hundred rupees at a time from dozens of dormant accounts. The money flowed into digital wallets and then into shell investment accounts.

Sunil rationalized every move.

“These people are gone. Their children don’t care. The bank will never even notice.”

For six months, the trio worked undetected. AI bots processed millions of transactions daily — theirs blended right in.

---

The Unexpected Living Ghost

Then one morning, Aryan burst into Sunil’s flat, alarmed.

“Uncle, we’ve got a problem. One of your ghost accounts — Ramesh Khatri — is active again.”

Sunil frowned. “That’s impossible. He died three years ago.”

Raghav checked the system logs.

“Someone’s making withdrawals, using valid two-factor authentication. It’s legit activity.”

A chill ran through Sunil. “Maybe his nephew…”

Aryan looked up sharply. “Yes. His nephew’s name is Rohan Khatri. And guess what — he works in your old bank. In the cybersecurity division.”

Sunil froze. For the first time, the thrill of revenge turned to fear.

---

The Fall

Two weeks later, Sunil’s doorbell rang at dawn.
Policemen entered, followed by a young man with sharp, observant eyes — Rohan Khatri.

“Mr. Verma,” Rohan said quietly, “you were my uncle’s banker. He trusted you.”

Sunil’s voice trembled. “I didn’t touch his money knowingly…”

Rohan interrupted gently.

“You made one mistake, sir. You trained the AI system years ago — its anomaly detection algorithm learned from your own working patterns. When those same keystroke rhythms appeared again, from outside the bank network, it flagged them.”

Sunil stared blankly. “You mean… it recognized me?”

Rohan nodded. “The system you helped design remembered you better than the people you served.”

As the officers led him away, Sunil muttered under his breath,

“I built relationships humans forgot — and machines remembered.”

---

Epilogue

Months later, a short news item appeared:

“Ex-bank employee held for siphoning funds from dormant accounts. AI-driven anomaly detection and ethical reporting by cybersecurity staff led to his arrest.”

In his prison cell, Sunil sometimes read that headline on an old newspaper clipping.
He smiled faintly and whispered,

“At least the AI finally remembered my name.”

---

Note:

This story explores how automation, while improving efficiency, can quietly erode the emotional bond between people and institutions. When technology replaces empathy, even honest men can lose their moral compass. Yet, as Sunil discovered too late, machines may lack emotion — but they never forget.